GEOTRACES: High-Quality Marine Analytical Chemistry on a Global Scale

Abstract

Studies of ocean chemistry on a global scale have a long history, beginning with the Challenger Expedition in the 19th Century. In the modern era, the Geochemical Ocean Section Study (GEOSECS) programme in the 1970s provided the first global picture of inorganic carbon and its isotopes in the ocean and laid the basis for the first assessments of the extent to which the oceans take up fossil fuel CO 2 from the atmosphere. This foundation was later complemented by the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) which, although focused primarily on physical oceanography, provided a wealth of information on nutrient and inorganic carbon distributions.